


This Desert Sun

by jibber_jabber



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Feelings Realization, Introspection, Morphogenetic Fields (Zero Escape), Mutual Pining, Slightly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 07:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30018354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jibber_jabber/pseuds/jibber_jabber
Summary: Under the same Nevada sun, Junpei and Akane think about each other and what could have been.
Relationships: Kurashiki Akane/Tenmyouji Junpei
Kudos: 10





	This Desert Sun

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished 999 a few days and it utterly destroyed me, so this emerged from my head.
> 
> It's a slight variation on the ending to the game with a bit of a more hopeful note than the canon but still bittersweet. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!

She cuts her hair as soon as they leave the desert in the parking lot of a mostly abandoned convenience store. It’s the middle of the afternoon. The sun shines bright. Aoi goes inside to buy them food for the next few days, and Akane takes an old pair of scissors—packed in advance of the games as a precaution for when they'd inevitably have to go on the run—and chops everything off. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn't recognize the face staring back at her.

Reflected in her eyes, she sees the things in life that have made her cold and hard. The things that have made her Zero.

Aoi emerges from the store holding three bags full of food and other toiletries, which he tosses into the backseat, and he grunts as he slips into the drivers’ side of the truck, forehead slick with sweat. “It's too fucking hot. We're gonna die out here.”

“Well, scientifically speaking, it—”

He gives her a glare that would make most people wither, but luckily for Akane, she’s been the recipient of it many times. “Don’t.”

Aoi peels out of the parking lot, while Akane unfolds the map. She’s charted out their course for the next several weeks, down to the precise dates in which they should arrive at each location. The road ahead of them is desolate and empty, much like the desert had been, except there is now asphalt and the occasional building.

"Do you think they're looking for us right now?" Akane asks after they’ve been driving for a little while.

"Loverboy? Shit, he's probably scouring every fucking inch of that desert looking for you,” Aoi snorts, but his hands tighten on the steering wheel nonetheless. "But the others? Forget it."

Akane swallows and moves to tug on her hair before remembering it isn’t long anymore. 

_Jumpy_.

She’s almost kissed him three times in her life now. Once, when they were children and he'd given her that doll, she had thought about it. Then reconsidered, seeing as his lips were swollen to about three times their normal size. Twice, when she'd died in his arms in that submarine room, but she couldn't gather the strength to do so. And thrice, behind Door 4, when they were tucked out of sight in that bedroom. Akane imagines herself kissing him now. Wrapping her arms around Jumpy, her Jumpy, and kissing him absolutely silly. Sighing into his mouth. Drinking from his lips like sweet wine from a glass (not that she’s ever had much of a taste for wine, but she thinks it an apt comparison) as they topple over onto the bed, smiling and laughing and being with one other like they should’ve been all along.

Their lives could have been different. She sees all the possible timelines for them, stretched in front of her like interconnecting rivers. A never-ending network of outcomes, and only some with happy endings. This is not their timeline. In this life, he saves her from certain death and an unsolvable paradox, and she repays him by never being able to see him again; at least, not for a very long time. Not until the world has forgotten her crimes.

Akane knows he understands why she did it. For both of their sakes’… he _has_ to.

She must have a look on her face because Aoi glances sideways at her and says, “You alright there, space cadet?”

Akane forces a smile. “Yes! I'm fine. Don't worry about me.”

They reach a three-way intersection a few miles up the road. Akane consults the map and tells Aoi to go left.

Through the morphogenetic field, she calls out to him.

* * *

As they speed across the desert at a pleasant one hundred miles per hour, Clover tries to get everyone to play some dumb game.

“I spy with my little eye... something green!”

“Is it that cactus over there?” Seven ventures.

He's met with a giggle. “Nope!”

“Are you kiddin' me?” Seven’s hands are bunched into fists now. “There's only like three green things in this whole damn desert, and you're gonna tell me that's not it?”

The car runs over a rock at full speed and jolts, sending everyone in the air for a moment. Junpei is crushed against the window, cheek pressed to the glass as the full weight of Seven and Snake falls on him. He groans, bracing his hands on the back of Lotus’s seat as everyone regains their balance.

“Clover, seeing as we’ve just escaped a life-or-death situation, and I really don’t want to make this into another one, could you _please_ slow down a bit?”

“Ugh, fine,” she says, pouting. “You guys are no fun.”

She presses on the brakes, bringing their total speed down to around eighty miles per hour, and Junpei is finally able to sit up again. In the rearview mirror, he catches Lotus laughing at him. 

“You’re such a shrimp, kid,” she says. “Nearly got crushed to death back there by Fatty.”

“Shut up,” is all he, and apparently Seven, can think to say.

They’ve been following the tire tracks in the sand for a few hours now, and the adrenaline of having escaped the Nonary Games is starting to wear off. Junpei’s watched Snake almost fall asleep about three times now, and Seven actually did nap at one point, snoring so loudly that Lotus had begged him to wake up. When everyone is awake, they pass the time with idle chatter and daydreams about what they’ll do once they return home.

But there’s only one thing on Junpei’s mind. Akane.

Junpei wonders if he should have said something sooner. If he should have just pushed her up against the nearest surface and kissed her senseless and told her he loved her while he had the opportunity. Sure, the others might’ve—no, definitely—would’ve ribbed them about it, but God, what he wouldn’t give for the chance to do that now. Before the truth behind the Second Nonary Games had revealed itself, grotesque and ugly in the light of revelation.

He understands why she did all of this—why she became Zero. Given the choice between living and burning alive in incinerator, well… he knows what he would do, if he was in her position. But what he doesn’t understand is why she’s left them all behind. Or rather, why she has left him behind. The longer they drive, the more he starts to feel that they will never find Aoi and Akane.

As he stares out the window at the lonely desert, he remembers a sunset on a hill, his face cracked and bruised and utterly broken, but she still somehow makes him smile, makes him remember why he’d defended her from all those big kids in the first place. The sky bursts a brilliant orange and pink, and warm spring air tickles his skin. He gives Akane the doll, and she smiles, crying joyful tears as she accepts his gift, and he thinks that as long as he can make her happy, he has done something good in this fucked up world.

Despite everything she’s done to them, he is still in love with her. He will put his life on the line again and again if it means that she is safe and alive. 

It hits him like an epiphany, and that’s when he hears it, the faintest whisper of his name:

_Jumpy_.

Even though it shouldn’t, it gives him hope.

He closes his eyes, breathes in, and tilts his head towards the desert sun.


End file.
